» Journal Tips
Although I do not write in a journal regularily, I am a huge believer in journal writing on journeys.They are a way of capturing the thoughts, feelings and moments of the trip - many that you will surprisingly forget about otherwise.
I bought my first journal in Paris, France - but I did not expect to use it as a journal. I bought the book so I could keep track of what places I went to, transportation I took, people I met, etc. It wasn't very much - maybe a page or two of notes per day.
But in a period of a few days, my scribbles became sentences, my lists became paragraphs. Pretty soon, I couldn't stop writing. Rather than start each entry with just the date, I included the time as well. I was completely addicted.
The objective of making a journal is to capture the physical, mental and spiritual details of your travels. A journal can be an extension to your memory or a way of sparking your memory... or both. Even a few weeks after my trips, I flip to a random page in my journal and revisit the adventure I took. Although I can remember vividly many aspects of my trip, my journal fills in the blanks to what I have forgotten by using the stimuli of words, drawings, and objects.
The following pages provide a few examples of what I like to include in my journals. Because of what I include in them, my journals are by far more important than any other item I come home with on my trips. Feel free to use these in your journal.
(And, yes, I do like to write small.)
» WritingA journal should not only record what you see on your journey,
but also equally as important aspects: smells, tastes, textures, and sounds. And there are plenty of other things that you can record (which I’ll get into later). It is easy to simply keep a list of what you did during your traveling days. (Examples: "Woke up. Had breakfast. Went to the Louvre. Walked down to the Notre Dame.") Believe it or not, without a good journal, you might forget the details of what you felt or thought when you were exploring. So listing your feelings, your thoughts, and even what seems like inconsequential details at the time, will re-ignite the experiences in your heart, mind, and soul as if they happened yesterday.
from there. Some entries would be a couple of words while others would be a page and a half long.
others. But it doesn’t really matter how well you draw, you should still attempt to do it. The actualaction of drawing something on your trip is far more important than the outcome of the piece of art. Drawing anything you see on your trip allows you to capture it in your mind more than if you just took a picture. I spent a half hour drawing a sunset over the Bay of Naples in Italy (click here). Because of this, I can simply close my eyes and see the beautiful sunset happen over and over again in my mind. Plus, a drawing adds personality to a journal and breaks up the monotony of its pages.
hostel/pension, or visiting a neat location, I like to draw a map of it. I walk around and first draw a general layout of the place - it’s rooms, hallways, doors, etc. I slowly add more details - position of paintings, rugs, cabinets, windows - and soon I have captured a blueprint of the place. Like drawing, the action of drawing the map has made you look at things that you could have easily missed. I discovered a beautiful light switch cover in a house in Romania that I doubt I would have ever seen if I didn’t map out the house.
around a bulky book!) The objects not only added flavor to my journal, it also introduced me to areas of that city that I wouldn’t have otherwise seen. How often do you go into a post office on a trip? What about admiring plants and flowers? If it wasn’t for my habitual collecting, I wouldn’t know, for instance, how big stamp collecting is in Croatia but not in Yugoslavia; or how many different clovers are in Italy. Flat finds can add so many things to both your journal and your journey!
to me because they capture the moment in time. I like old postcards for the same reason - the words could have been written at any time, but that postmarked stamp is from a single day in history that can never be replicated (not without a lot of work, at least). And it also adds the romance and adventure of your trip to paper. At the time, a postmark from Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herz, for instance, was something easily attainable. But now, months after I was there, the postmark has a kind of Indiana Jones-ish look and feel to it. It says to me "You were there! Remember this forever!"
rubber stamps from post offices, train stations, bus terminals, and even ticket booths that add a unique quality to your journal. Especially in Eastern Europe, you will find it easy to get some interesting stamps in your book. After a bit of hand language and a few key foreign words, I was able to get a stamp from every place I asked. If you are able to tell them it’s for your personal use and it’s going into a book, then they usually have no problems at all. In fact, I have had some people flip through my journal and admire the other stamps that I have received!
I became obsessed with writing in my journal. I would carry it wherever I went and write little notes in it throughout the day. I would start every entry with the time and then go
There are just as many ways of making a journal as there are ways to take a trip. Adventures are made by you and what you do, not by where you go and what you see. The same can be said about a journal. The more you apply yourself to diligent journal work, the more it will give back to you weeks, months, even years later.
»Drawings
» Maps
» Collections
On my journey through Europe, I made it a habit to collect certain objects from each city I stopped in that I could add to my journal. I call these objects "flat finds." (it is very hard to add items to your journal that cannot be flattened unless you don’t mind carrying
It was in Germany where I started adding flowers to my journal. Every time I flip open my journal and see that yellow flower I taped into it, I am reminded me of when I biked down a road through a western Germany countryside next to fields filled with millions of yellow flowers - the same fields where I picked the flower that is now in my journal. In pages filled with writings and drawings from the same black Bic pen, it is nice to see color every once in a while in the form of a flower... or a stamp.
» Stamps & Postmarks
» The Other Stamp
